


White-Tailed

by BigBoyParty



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: (mostly weed), Body Horror, Deer, Forests, Friendship, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, Pining, Psychological Horror, Recreational Drug Use, closeted Jisung, minho spooky monster man, soyeon HUNTS, straight Changbin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:26:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26888845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigBoyParty/pseuds/BigBoyParty
Summary: There was a man in the front seat. He was pretty, with a long neck and a slender nose. He was pressing one pointer finger inside his bottom lip, tracing it along his gums. Jisung watched him turn and smile. Jisung coughed and smiled back.“Tell me what you remember, baby.”Jisung pressed his cheek into the cold palm the man held outstretched and sighed.“I don't remember anything.” Jisung sounded hoarse. The man frowned,“Come on. Try a little harder for me.”//Jisung was a nobody. He worked at the gas station, rapped when he wasn't working and, when he wasn't rapping, pined over his roommate Changbin. When the two men ventured out into the woods one day and happened across an abandoned vehicle with someone inside, Jisung was convinced he'd finally found an outlet for the feelings he'd kept inside so long. It's not like he had anything to come back to anyway.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 14
Kudos: 61
Collections: Stray Kids SpookFest





	1. Prologue

From home, Minho liked to watch the hunters. Or, more truthfully, he liked to watch the hunt.

He’d make himself small behind the dashboard of the old Honda Civic, spray painted to hell, and he’d watch. The deer always ran faster when they knew it was hunting season, like the very temperature of the air set their blood rushing a little harder. Minho loved watching them dance around the missed shots, startling and running so fast they’d leave their spotted children behind. Minho’s eyes always narrowed to the horizon, searching for that impossible combination of camouflage and high-visibility orange. Pretending to be hidden, but begging to be found. He’d watch the fated shot that connected, bullet ripping through the neck of some poor stag. The unearthly noise as the beast crumpled to the ground.

And then Minho would listen. He’d lean back, pull his knees up to his chest and listen to the deer’s body being dragged across the forest floor. Sometimes, hunters would rip their knives through its flesh, tendons snapping under their blade. Minho’s favorite was when hunters cut the deer’s head off, a long sawing task, looking for the trophy they would mount on their wall. He liked when they left the body behind, headless and pooling in the dirt. Minho would lean forward over the dashboard and suck his fingers and watch the body decay. In warmer weeks, this happened quickly, but sometimes he’d sit for months and watch flesh peel slowly from the bone.

Minho had always lived in the car. Maybe he had died in it, years ago, a ghost from a past life he had completely forgotten. Sometimes he thought he was an alien. He dropped in from another planet, like a meteor, planted in this earth he didn’t understand and bound to unravel it. Or maybe Minho emerged from the wrapped bark of a tree. 

Either way, Minho was hungry. He’d catch hunters on their way back up the trail, or as they ventured deeper into the woods, and Minho would lure them closer. Pretending to be hidden, but begging to be found. Minho would wrap his arms around them and kiss up their neck until their eyes rolled and brains went numb. He’d scrape his teeth along their dick, wrap all his limbs around them like a spider and let himself take or be taken. He’d drive them so deep inside themselves they wouldn’t notice the sores on his skin, or the trees around them melting down to technicolor puddles. They wouldn’t notice the life leaving them slowly, curled up in his old Honda Civic, their bodies rashing up with their minds. 

Minho liked watching them go crazy, observing cooly how they’d scream in terror at whatever the trees were telling them. Try to escape only to walk in circles and circles back to him. Back to his neck and his lips and his cold black eyes.

Minho would liquify them, suck them dry and leave their sallow husks littered around the woods like deflated party balloons no one would ever find. No one would ever find Minho out.

Right now, Minho was planning a big hunt. He leaned across the backseat of his old car and watched the stars creep out behind the trees, his ears buzzing. Tomorrow, they’d arrive with their giggles and low, slurring conversation, and Minho would have food and entertainment for days. Jisung would be the perfect prey.


	2. Chapter 2

_ “Do you remember how you got here, Jisung?” _

Jisung blinked and coughed. The sun was bright, though he could only see it through the cloudy smears in the windshield and the little points on the windows still unmarked by spray paint. How long had it been?

“Jiisuung.”

His head hurt. He sat up slowly, uncurling himself from the backseat of the car and sitting upright. It smelled like mold in here.

There was a man in the front seat. He was pretty, with a long neck and a slender nose. He was pressing one pointer finger inside his bottom lip, tracing it along his gums. Jisung watched him turn and smile. Jisung coughed and smiled back.

“Tell me what you remember, baby.”

Jisung pressed his cheek into the cold palm the man held outstretched and sighed.

“I don't remember anything.” Jisung sounded hoarse. The man frowned,

“Come on. Try a little harder for me.”

It was a beautiful day out, Jisung remembered that. The perfect September weather, with a cool breeze ripping through occasionally and setting the leaves to whispering. Jisung was stepping out of his car and stretching up towards the sun, and he was with Changbin.

Changbin.

Changbin rolled them both a blunt, and Jisung’s eyes lingered on his friend’s tongue tracing along the wrap. Changbin’s sun-dappled skin, a golden glint in his eyes and teeth when he smiled, “We didn’t keep you up last night, did we?”

Jisung was a good liar. He remembered that too. He remembered clearing his throat and smiling, “No, were you up late?”

“Oh man,” Changbin laughed and lit up, taking a long pull, “She had me up all night, bro. She’s fucking obsessed with me.”

Changbin was talking about Soyeon again. They worked together sometimes, but Jisung always ended up leaving the studio in a huff as Soyeon straddled Changbin’s lap, shoving her tongue down his throat, and Changbin grabbed desperately at her thighs. Jisung remembered sitting jealously in his room while they made sounds which were nothing short of painful.

“Where is he?” Jisung croaked, letting his face smush into the upholstered driver’s seat. The man in the front seat smiled and stroked his cheek.

“Who, your friend?” Jisung nodded, and the man sighed, “He left you here, baby. You wanted to spend some time with me, remember?”

Jisung scrunched his face up. He shook his head. His stomach hurt.

“Poor thing. Come here.”

When the man in the front passenger seat climbed back with him, Jisung wasn’t scared, but his body still shook anyway. He put his hands up feebly to catch their waist as they climbed into his lap and kissed him. A hot flood ran down his body. He was melting in this person’s arms.

“Do you remember my name, baby?” Jisung shook his head. The man kissed his neck, “It’s Minho.”

When Minho kissed Jisung, it was like nothing Jisung had felt before. It was like his whole body was liquifying, buzzing and dripping hot from his eyes and lips. If Jisung was still thinking straight, he would be self conscious about his drooling, but he couldn’t remember the last time he thought straight. Minho’s tongue ran along his chin, sucking up his drool, and Jisung groaned and sank back against the car’s seat. He went limp, and let Minho maneuver his pants down and his shirt off over his head.

When he blinked, he thought he saw pockmarks on his thighs for just a moment. But he opened his eyes again and they were gone.

Minho bit into the meaty tendon by his groin and sucked and sucked him dry. Jisung spasmed and gasped underneath him.

_ “Are you scared?” _

Jisung was still limp, and naked. He spilled out across Minho’s lap.

“No.” Minho’s hands stung on his skin, but there was something addictive in their burn. Jisung licked his lower lip.

“Don't you have somewhere to go back to?”

Changbin and Soyeon. That was it. Jisung worked at the gas station. Jisung did acid and watched tv on the weekends. Jisung was a nobody. “No.”

For that answer, Minho kissed him again, and Jisung shuddered and groaned at his touch.


	3. Chapter 3

There was something sticky on the floor of the car. Jisung must have taken his shoes off, or maybe Minho had. He was flat on his back in the backseat, looking at the dead leaves and stains on the sunroof. When was the last time he saw the sun?

Jisung’s toes crawled the floor, poking slowly against the mess under the seats. Maybe if he dragged his toes along it the right way, he could figure out what was down there. For a moment, he thought he felt the arch of an empty eyelid, a curved pair of lips, but it was hard to keep track of details. It was too dark in here for thinking.

Minho was staring at him again. Jisung wanted to be kissed, but he didn’t know how many more of Minho’s kisses his body could handle. He ached all over, the kind of pain he could feel in his bones.

Jisung sat up slowly. “I have to pee,” he slurred.

Minho nodded and gestured to the car door with his chn, “Go outside.”

Outside.   
Jisung swallowed and licked his lips. His hands pressed to the car door, discovering the handle. The door clicked when it opened.

At first, things weren’t so bad. Jisung’s bare foot touched down in the moist dirt. He dragged his body out of the back seat, wobbling, trying desperately to keep himself upright. It felt like the world was melting all around him.

It was night time by now, just enough light from the moon for Jisung to watch the trees’ leaves bend into faces, blinking and scowling at him with the wind. Jisung knew that he should run. His lazy heart picked up on that much, pounding at his ears as he took two shaky steps and then tumbled onto his knees. His hands stung in the dirt, and he crawled. Just a few feet, little by little, until he found himself beside a tree.

His knees hurt, so Jisung rotated onto his butt. He sat on the wet dirt, his shoulders pressed against the tree, and pissed. He hoped the urine would flow downhill, but it was hard to get his bearings as the darkness sunk and squished around him, and he ended up in a warm puddle of his own pee. It stung and itched at his skin, but Jisung was too transfixed to move. He squinted into the darkness.

There was this heavy sound, like footsteps, but Jisung couldn’t locate it. His head was swimming too much, and the trees were changing. There was this shifting halo around everything, like a migraine, and every light seemed like an eyeball to him. It wasn’t right. Jisung swallowed and tried to focus on the sounds approaching, and the bush which began to rustle in front of him. It sounded like the footsteps were closing in all around him, pounding against his head. Something in Jisung wanted to flinch, but he couldn’t. He was too tired from crawling. 

There was a hot breath against his face, and Jisung’s only defense was to scrunch his eyes shut. He flinched weakly when a wet nose pressed into his forehead, then ghosted away along his temple. Jisung brought his hands up, the back of his head pushing against the tree. Short fur bristled along his palms, his fingers coming up to reach a set of smooth, curving antlers.

Jisung opened his eyes, face to face with the black eyes of a deer. It nudged his face with its nose and let out a little huff, before continuing on past Jisung. He reached one hand out and traced the side of the deer’s body, blinking into the darkness.

Jisung didn’t know how long he was sitting there, watching the trees shift and hearing the bushes rustle, before Minho’s hands hooked under his arms.

“Did you get lost out here, Jisung?” 

Minho dragged and maneuvered Jisung back into the stranded car, and the rusty door squealed as it shut behind them.


	4. Chapter 4

When they were first coming out here, Jisung thought Changbin looked beautiful. With the morning sun filtering through leaves, everything did. Jisung watched the smoke curl from his best friend’s lips and blinked, hopping to his feet.

“What’s the rush?” Changbin had a stupid little smile.

“Nothing, I’m just antsy I think. I want to see what’s further up the path.”

Changbin shrugged, holding the end of the blunt between his lips as he shrugged his backpack onto his shoulders and followed close by Jisung. They passed the blunt back and forth between each other, speaking quietly and watching squirrels rustle through the leaves.

As they walked, Changbin and Jisung came upon a clearing. Jisung never breathed like he did out here, with fields stretching out to either side of him, a power line cresting the top of a distant hill, and the sky shooting up miles and miles above him. Jisung stretched his arms over his head and let out a warm sigh, turning slowly around and taking in the yellow cast of light on the grass. 

A few yards off to his right side, a stag ambled through the grass. It was barely large enough to poke out above the tall grass, still growing into its hooves and antlers. It paused, chewing, and stared at the two boys on the path. Jisung smiled and gave a gentle wave. The deer huffed and lept once in the air, trotting off into the woods.

“Do you think Soyeon would like if I wrote her a song?” Changbin asked as they walked.

Jisung shrugged, “That’s pretty gay.” He twisted one of his woven friendship bracelets around his wrists and smirked, “I thought  _ she _ was obsessed with  _ you _ .”

“She is, she is. I just...” Changbin blinked slowly, rustling in his back pocket for more rolling papers, “I’m trying to stay in her good graces, you know?”

“Mm.”

_ “You poor thing.” _

Jisung blinked at the ceiling of the car and breathed low and shallow. Minho was in his lap again, and it was dark. “No one realizes how perfect you are,” Minho cooed. His breath was hot and his mouth was wet when it pressed against Jisung’s cheek, gnawing. Jisung didn’t know what Minho did, but he knew it sent something hot through his blood. It was like shooting up an orange glow stick.

Minho slipped Jisung’s hard cock inside of himself and kept talking, “No one appreciates you like I do, baby. You’re so fucking hot.” Minho bounced and twisted in his lap, and all of Jisung’s energy went into thrusting up inside of him, groaning shallowly.

Jisung watched through eyes half-closed as Minho took hold of his right wrist, ringed with woven friendship bracelets, and brought it to his mouth. He watched Minho’s soft lips part, his features as beautiful as ever as he sunk his teeth into Jisung’s wrist and sucked him dry.

Minho’s teeth were like needles. Jisung’s hips rolled. Minho’s tongue probed the center of his wound, toyed with the raw edges of his skin. For a moment, Jisung saw his arm erupt in little red sores, before another hot orange pulse flowed through his veins and all he saw was smooth skin, the stained sunroof, and Minho’s gorgeous face.

_ “He probably won’t even miss you, you know?” _


	5. Chapter 5

When Jisung and Changbin happened upon the abandoned car, they were already really fucking high. Maybe that’s why they took a particular interest in it, Jisung climbing through vines and low brambles to get a better look.

“What model is it?” Jisung asked, pulling some vines aside to look at the technicolor graffiti over every inch of the car’s surface. 

“I think it’s a civic.” Changbin ducked down beside Jisung, bringing one hand up to wipe some dirt off the back window. Changbin cupped his hands around his brow and peered into the car. A chipmunk skittered down the trunk of a nearby tree. Changbin squinted, then slowly pulled away, his hands falling to his sides. “Bro, I’m too fucking high right now.”

Jisung snorted, “Let me look.”

He bent over, smelling the car’s rust, and pressed his face to the window. It was dark inside, but Jisung swore he saw a figure inside. Someone climbing out of the back seat, climbing over the console, and grabbing the passenger-side door’s handle.

The door opened with a screech, and Jisung startled, falling back against Changbin’s side. The two boys let out a panicked cascade of “bro”s, but before they could do much of anything, the figure from the car was turning around, and Jisung was transfixed.

It was the most beautiful man Jisung had ever seen.

_ “Do you wish I looked more like him?” _ Minho asked now. He was always talking.

Jisung groaned. “No.” He wished it wasn’t true. Changbin was beautiful. Soft arms, greasy skin. Nothing like Minho’s cold sharpness.

He remembered Changbin’s hand on his forearm, clenching right above his bracelets. “Bro, what the fuck are you doing!?” 

Jisung was kissing Minho.

“JISUNG!?” Changbin’s soft hands, his grip strong on Jisung’s wrist, pulling, but Jisung pushed him away. “Jisung, what the fuck!?” Changbin stumbled back, “What are you doing, that’s fucking disgusting!”

Jisung’s hands were running up Minho’s smooth back.

“Dude, I’m gonna fucking leave you here if you don't look at me.” Changbin was really getting pathetic now, “I’m serious! Fucking get OFF HIM!” 

Minho didn’t move when Changbin pushed him. He pulled Jisung closer, tilted his head, and bit into his shoulder. Jisung let out a long groan.

Changbin tried to catch his eyes, “Don't you see his fucking skin, Jisung? What is wrong with you?”

“He’s beautiful,” Jisung murmured, his words already sludging together. He squeezed Changbin’s hand once, “He’s so beautiful....Please let me stay.”


	6. Chapter 6

Changbin reeled.

That man’s face was imprinted on his brain. It wasn’t right. The stranger’s skin had been raw and red, like peeling sunburn, pitted with deep bloody holes. He barely even looked human, the redness creeping in around the edges of his face, but Jisung hadn’t seemed to see any of it. Jisung had climbed into the car with him, and Changbin stood and watched his closest friend’s hands press against the fogging window. 

They never should have looked at the car.

Changbin wanted to say he was too high for this, but he didn’t know if he would ever be sober enough for something like this. Hearing his friends moans. Waiting for hours beside the car. Changbin tried breaking in, once the voices fell silent. He banged on the windows and the roof, but Jisung was slumped in the backseat and barely even stirred. The man with the pretty face and sores all over his skin didn’t stir either, just gazed plainly out the windshield. Changbin was running out of energy and it was getting dark so, bewildered, he wandered back up the trail.

A deer ran alongside his path, hooves pounding the dirt, but Changbin didn’t notice. He was inside himself.

_ “Soyeonnnn _ ,” Changbin’s voice was strained and high,  _ “Can you come here, please? Jisung and I were hiking and he. We were looking at this car and someone was inside and Jisung went with them and.”  _ Changbin sucked back some snot. He was walking fast, his footsteps crunching in the dirt, and the wind blew into the phone’s receiver. 

The sun had set by now.

_ “I just need you to come here Soyeon. I’m scared and I don't know if he’s okay and I don't know what to do.” _

He left the recording on too long, so Soyeon could hear him opening his car door and slamming it behind him. Changbin scooted the drivers seat away from the wheel and tried to calm his breathing, staring out the windshield. He couldn’t get the stranger’s face out of his mind, the way the sores seemed to creep in at the edges of smooth, perfect skin. Redness was starting to flare up on his wrist, where the man had pushed Changbin away after one of his failed attempts at separating him from Jisung. Changbin reeled and watched the redness part to little bloody dots, then wider sores. They opened up before his eyes, like black mouths along his wrist. 

By the time Soyeon found him, Changbin was practically catatonic, staring at his arm in blind panic. He didn’t hear her boots in the grass, but he knew her voice all too well. 

“Oh baby,” she groaned, briefly petting his head, “Get it together.”


	7. Chapter 7

It was dark. Jisung couldn’t really tell if his eyes were open or not anymore. Either way, it was dark, and no amount of blinking seemed to clear the running colors imprinted over his vision. Was this what it felt like to die? A glob of red spiraled down his left eye, blocking the faint shadow of a leaf on the sunroof. He knew the moon was up there somewhere, though he couldn’t make it out through the stained windshield or the blues and purples bubbling up on the right side of his vision.

Jisung missed making small talk with Minho. It hadn’t been so long really, had it? Not so long for the burning to grow so strong Jisung couldn’t bear to move. Not so long for the conversation to die down. Now, there was only the low continuous gurgle of Minho’s lips against his neck. Jisung wondered how much more of him was left for Minho to lap up. He wondered if anyone would find him, melted down to nothing in the backseat of this car.

He wished he didn’t love it so much when Minho kissed him. His lips were chapped but his vision flooded all pink and orange and his body kept relaxing further into the seats. He got flashes of texture now, his fingertip sinking momentarily into a soft patch of blood between Minho’s shoulder blades. Minho’s flesh gave way like an overripe peach, a little burst of fluid leaking out as he dug his fingers in. It made Jisung shudder, but as soon as Minho kissed him again he wasn’t thinking anymore. He sunk deeper inside himself and watched the sunset on his eyelids.

Jisung barely even heard the window shatter.

It cracked first, webbed fractures stretching across the window pane. Then, with another bang, it shattered completely. Shards of glass rained down on Jisung and Minho, a flash of moon on the dark bar of a tire iron. A hand reached in through the broken window, and when Jisung blinked the streaks of pink away he saw it was a familiar one. Soft, a little red along the wrist. The nails were short and somehow struck the balance between healthy-looking and hopelessly grimy. Black half-moons under the fingernails. Jisung thought they were beautiful hands.

They were Changbin’s.

Blue and green burst across Jisung’s vision as the car door flung open with a squeal. A little yellow spiral danced on the corner of his eye as the tire iron entered the body of the vehicle again, with a woman’s grunt behind it. The tire iron squelched as it sunk into Minho’s flesh, then cracked as it struck the beautiful man again on the back of his head. Jisung felt the man on top of him weaken and slump, his lips finally leaving Jisung’s neck.

Minho was pushed aside, and two strong arms wrapped themselves under Jisung’s armpits. His vision clouded blue, then faded as he was pulled up in Changbin’s grasp. “Jesus fucking christ bro,” Changbin groaned, supporting Jisung’s weight. Jisung nuzzled his face in Changbin’s shoulder and let out a sigh which seemed to last forever.


	8. Chapter 8

“Jisung,” Soyeon’s face bounced in and out of Jisung’s view, “Jisung!” 

He blinked a few times. His head hurt.

“Stay with us, bro,” Changbin patted Jisung’s wrist.

Jisung groaned wordlessly and nuzzled into the back of Changbin’s neck. It was warm out, warmer than it had been when they left that morning. Or was it the morning before? Either way, the sun was coming up. Just barely now. Colors still streaked Jisung’s vision, but they were fading now. He looked up at the broad purple sky.

Soyeon had been brutal. Jisung’s memory was shaky, but he knew he’d watched her beat the beautiful man he’d been in the car with. His porcelain face fell into itself, his jaw cracking. Jisung wondered how Soyeon managed it, but she had always seen life differently than he did. Soeyeon was a hunter.

Jisung watched her high-vis orange flashing now, the bloody tire iron casual in her grasp. Her cargo pants shuffled when she walked, blazing the trail ahead of Changbin, who was walking much slower with Jisung clinging to his back. 

“He was so beautiful,” Jisung mumbled, smelling the tan line where Changbin’s t-shirt met his neck. From up close like this, Jisung could see the sores on his skin. They were everywhere, running up from his palms to his elbows. Little soft red patches and teeth marks where the man had bitten him. Jisung wondered if his influence was leaving his body now, that hot orange which flooded his blood leaking out with every bead of sweat or ooze of clearish fluid. Changbin jostled Jisung, hoisting him up more comfortably on his back.

“I thought you were going to die in that car. Don't do that shit again.”

Jisung sighed. A deer was keeping pace with the pack of three rappers, ambling through the trees a few yards away. When Jisung turned to face it, it didn’t seem to notice him, just continued its slow walk along. They were making pace with it.

“Someone ought to kill that deer,” Soyeon commented, wiping the tire iron on her pants.

“Why?” Jisung watched the deer stop and yawn. Draped across Changbin’s back like this, he could almost feel his lips brush the back of the other man’s neck.

“Hemorrhagic disease. It’s bad for the population. Look,” she gestured, “it’s got those cracks in its hooves, so it must be pretty advanced. My guess is it will be dead by tomorrow.”

“That’s kind of sad.” Jisung never got to be this close to Changbin. When his arms moved, he watched his blood smear off on Changbin’s clothing. An orange starburst bloomed in the corner of his eye.

Soyeon shrugged, “It’s nature.”

Later, Jisung was deposited in the back seat of Changbin’s car. He turned and stared out the back windshield and, squinting, made out the form of antlers and flicking pointed ears. The forest was full of deer, huffing and toeing the ground. Some had splintered hooves, like the one Soyeon had pointed out. Others had swollen faces, ulcerated tongues picking at leaves on the trees. Jisung swore one blinked at him before the three of them drove away.


	9. Chapter 9

Doctors didn’t know what to do with him. They hadn’t seen wounds like his before, and he knew they wouldn’t believe the details anyway, so they figured it was some kind of skin infection. They gave him big blue pills which made his head spin and an antibiotic ointment to rub on his skin. Slowly, the wounds faded, and the colors in his vision began to clear.

Jisung was still a nobody. He still worked at the gas station, dropped acid on days off, and wrote raps on his phone. He still stayed up at night, trying to sleep while Soyeon and Changbin fucked in the other room. Jisung still thought Changbin was the most beautiful man in the world, and he would probably never tell him, but sometimes he disappeared into the woods for an afternoon and told his secrets to the trees.

This was his new routine, laying his thick jacket down on a rock beside the trail, rolling a joint, and staring off into the leaves. Today, it was one of the first warm days in March. The temperature would have felt cold in September, but in March it was perfect. Jisung’s scars were still pink at the edges, but they were starting to fade into his skin. They made his forearms look like the surface of the moon.

Jisung brought peanut butter crackers from home. The orange kind that come in little plastic packs and dry your mouth out like nothing else in the world. He took a bite and choked it back, watching the trees’ new leaves rustle in the wind. There was a deer out there, weaving between the plants at an awkward, limping pace. Jisung snorted, spat over the edge of the rock, and blinked a wandering streak of blue from his vision.

“Come here,” Jisung called softly, holding out a couple crackers. The deer froze at first, raising its white tail and snorting, but Jisung stayed put. He blinked slowly at it and lifted his sweatshirt sleeves a little, exposing his scars. The deer limped a little closer.

“That’s it. It’s okay, dude. I'm not gonna hurt you.” Jisung balanced the crackers on his flat, outstretched palm. The deer came closer still, a swollen tongue jutting just a little out of its mouth, a few ulcers on its tip. “Poor thing.”

Jisung’s nose flooded with the deer’s animal scent as it bent its head down, nibbling at the crackers in the boy’s hand. The deer shifted curiously on split hooves and, slowly, Jisung raised one hand to stroke between its ears. The deer stiffened for a moment, then continued snacking, getting Jisung’s palm all damp as it ate. Jisung smiled and let a blob of pink fall down over his right eye.

When the animal finished eating, Jisung gently placed his hands on either side of its neck, feeling the little insect bites littered over his skin. He pressed his nose into the deer’s bristly short fur and huffed with it. 

“It’s okay,” Jisung whispered, letting his sleeves fall down and show all his woven bracelets and bitten scars to the forest, “It's good to be a gentle thing.”

The two creatures blinked and sighed together.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading! If you'd like to say hello, stop by my twitter or curiouscat!
> 
> Twitter: [BigBoyEels](https://twitter.com/BigBoyEels)   
> CuriousCat: [BigBoyEels](https://curiouscat.qa/BigBoyEels)


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